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Topic: Composing for Fife (Read 6857 times) previous topic - next topic

Composing for Fife

I teach the fife which is historically a B-flat instrument. When composing multi-part tunes, the instrument patches on the Composer do not seem to produce the effect I am trying to achieve. What instrument patch would you recommend I use? And is it possible in the future upgrades to include this woodwind in your instrument patches?

Re: Composing for Fife

Reply #1 –
Anne, the sounds generated by NWC are a function of your sound card. The instrument patches generally used by most sound cards are referred to as General MIDI instruments. This is a set of 128 standard instruments supported by almost all sound cards. If you are unhappy with the sound quality of one or more, perhaps a different sound card (or just another patch) may help. An important note here is that the quality varies with the equipment. Only those users with the same equipment as your computer will have exactly the same sensory experience when listening to a particular NWC song.

I hope this helps. ---- Eric (support@noteworthysoftware.com)

Re: Composing for Fife

Reply #2 –
I got the feeling from the phrasing you used that you are mentally transposing and writing music that a b flat player could play straight up in harmony with the music you did not mentally transpose when writing for the c player. I.E., a d was written on the b flat score and expected to be the same pitch as the c written on the c score. But MIDI and NWC GM instruments are all c instruments. Pitches will not transpose as you change 'playback instrument'. (Also note a piccolo will play bass clef in MIDI/NWC). The experiment-compose a one note song; play, change instrument, play; note that timbre may chage but pitch does not.

Re: Composing for Fife

Reply #3 –
One particular card, the Sound Blaster AWE-32 wavetable under Windows 95 and NoteWorthy with playback selected to 'Midimapper' (under tools/options/midi), gives a dissonant effect. With midi playback selected to AWE32 Synthesizer(620) the harmony is much better. My experience is limited to the one card but avoiding midi mapper may be a good idea for all cards under Win95.